The building in which Edgar Allan Poe and Virginia Clemm spent
their honeymoon was constructed in 1814 by Richard Hannon, owner of the nearby
Powhattan Plantation. From its inception, the structure was a luxury hotel and
"restorative" run by a French-Jamaican émigré, Richard Rambaut and his wife, the
Countess Elise de Rochefoucauld (formerly married to a descendant of the famous
French philosopher). After a market crash in 1827, Rambaut wrote a lengthy
letter to his wife, and took poison, allegedly in the hotel. (Psychics have
attested to his spirit still pacing on the second floor). Local poet and
newspaper editor Hiram Haines took over the restorative in 1829, and moved his
wife and six children into the adjacent No. 16. No pictures of the coffee house
exist, other than the 19th-century illustration below, which shows a portion of
Number 12, and all of Number 16 as it appeared at the time. The main level was
used as the newspaper offices.

Whether by accident or design,
the details about Edgar’s and Virginia’s brief escape from Richmond have
remained elusive, and rarely pursued.

But Hiram Haines, a minor poet
and editor of the American Constellation in Petersburg, was pivotal in the
couple’s choice of a honeymoon venue. Haines played an important role in Poe’s
Richmond years, but few historians have examined their relationship in any
depth.

When the elderly General
Lafayette visited Richmond in 1824, a young cadet at Burkes Academy, Lieutenant
Edgar Allan Poe, led his "Richmond Junior Volunteers" in saluting the
Revolutionary War hero with swords drawn. A day later, when Lafayette traveled
20 miles south to Petersburg, 22-year-old Hiram Haines, already known as a local
poet, kicked off the general’s visit with a poem of welcome at Niblo’s Tavern.

No one knows exactly where or
how these two young men befriended each other. But Haines’s wife, the daughter
of a wealthy Richmond merchant, knew and played with Poe as a child. The pair
were often mistaken for brother and sister and resembled each other greatly,
according to Haines' family records.

By 1829, Hiram Haines'
Restorative and Coffee House was a gathering place for poets, journalists, and
intellectuals of the region.

Upstairs, luxurious living
spaces surpassed much of what was available in Richmond and were touted as being
worthy of "presidential visits" in newspaper ads of the time.

Poe first visited the coffee
house while he was with the Southern Literary Messenger, and his friendship with
Haines blossomed during his years at that publication. When Poe and Virginia
married, it provided the perfect escape for a brief honeymoon getaway. One local
historian, Catherine Copeland, states that the couple was wined and dined in
Petersburg for two weeks before returning to Richmond. (Bravest Surrender, A
Petersburg Patchwork, 1961)

Haines and his wife operated the
coffee house/restorative from 1829 until late in 1836, when, beset by financial
problems he sold it. While still a young man, Haines died of bilious pleurisy in
1841. His grave, in Blandford Cemetery, has recently been restored.

In 2010, Hiram Haines Coffee
House reopened once again, reflecting an environment in which Eddy, Sissy and
their friends would have felt right at home.